The Lady and the Lemon Meringue

It is hard to say when it began. Mainly as it is impolite to speak with your mouth full. But it was the best of lemon meringues and it was – well, still pretty good. Even though it was one of her off days. Or if the lemons were past their best and the meringue refused to stiffen. Although, it was said at the time - by those who knew – that nothing would refuse to stiffen under her ministrations.

However, such musings were best left to those in the know. The rest of us could only stand and admire her wrist action.... and dream.

There were those who said too, that such fantastic lemon meringues were beyond mere human capabilities. That she was some supernatural being far beyond the mere mortal. Some thought her one of the woodland spirits that know the secrets of the fruit and the wondrous bounties of nature, and how to combine them to enslave and enthral us mere humans.

Others, though, spoke of the food of the gods. If anything on this Earth could lay claim to being such, then it was one of her lemon meringues. Those, of course, believed that she was some goddess, walking among us to bring us a taste of what humanity could aspire to. So when – at long last – we threw off these earthly shackles and the mortal concerns we bind ourselves with - we could take our rightful place in the heavens of the gods.

Those of a more prosaic nature claimed it was what the spoon was invented for.

The rest of us queued formally and in reverence for our portions. We offered our thanks and sat down with our own slice of heaven here on earth, hoping it would never end and our bowls would never empty.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

When Gods Are Made

‘Thursday?’

‘Thursday.’

Why Thursday?’

‘It is the only one we have left. You should have been here for the meeting.’ The Goddess shuffled the papers on her desk without looking up at him. ‘Nobody else wanted it.’

‘Why not?’

‘The Goddess shrugged. ‘I don’t know… personally I’ve never liked Tuesdays….’ She looked up at him. ‘Anyway, from now on Thursday will be known as Plunkday. All right?’

Plunk nodded. Of the many things he’d wished for over his short but troubled life none of them had involved either being a… the weather god, or having a day of the week named after him.

Now he had both.

The Goddess smiled brightly. ‘Happy?’

‘No.’ Plunk shrugged. ‘I wasn’t happy before… before all this….’ He looked around at the strange room the Goddess called her office. ‘But now I’m unhappy and dry, rather than unhappy and wet, so I’m not complaining, mind.’

The only other room Plunk had ever seen called an office was also… in politer company known as the privy. So, he had been a little perturbed when the Goddess first said she wanted him to meet her in her priv… her office.

Even now he was a bit suspicious of the rather luxurious and comfy seat she was using. But it did swivel and Plunk took a little comfort in the idea that few people… or even gods, for that matter, would want a swivelling privy seat… or would they? 

He didn’t know any more.

This becoming a god… becoming the new weather god… was turning out to be much more complicated than he imagined.

The Goddess pushed a piece of paper across the table she called her desk towards him. ‘Sign here.’

‘What?’

She tapped the piece of paper at the end closest to Plunk. ‘Sign here.’

‘How?’

‘You know just write your na….’ She looked at him ‘You can’t write can you?’

Plunk shook his head. ‘Not much call for it, herding ducks.’

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]

Couldn’t Stand the Weather

It was cold.

It was wet.

It was normal.

Plunk looked up at the sky, the clouds were grey. The bits of the sky were there were no clouds were grey too. There was a slightly lighter grey over where Plunk assumed the sun would be. ‘Bloody weather.’ He spoke without rancour or hostility, just stating a fact. He gathered his cloak around him and shoved at the door with his shoulder.

The damp-swollen door shuddered open and the cold wind threw a handful of rain straight into Plunk’s face. ‘Bugger,’ he said, again more as a statement of fact than a curse. He’d given up cursing the weather the day they’d found and killed the weather god. Plunk didn’t think there was much point in cursing the weather now there was no god to listen, but old habits do die hard… much as weather gods die, come to that. Plunk’s mouth tried to remember how to smile at the memory as he trudged head down through the puddles and the wind-thrown rain towards his barn.

Plunk couldn’t remember whether the weather was better before they’d killed the weather god, as some staunch religionists claimed. Somehow he doubted it, gods, like lords, like kings and everyone else who managed to grab some power – to Plunk’s mind – were all the same. As long as they were warm and dry and had all the food, drink and women their wealth and power could get them, then they couldn’t give a stuff for ordinary folk.

Plunk opened his barn door and smiled at his flock of ducks, who - contrary to local folklore - seemed more than happy to be inside out of the rain.

There was a rustle and she emerged from the stacked hay on the hayloft above his head. Plunk grabbed for his hayfork. ‘Who are you?’

She floated down the ladder, her feet not appearing to step on the rungs. ‘Don’t you recognise me, Plunk?’

‘Ye… y… Yes, Goddess,’ Plunk felt his knees bending as he pulled his cap from his head. ‘What do you want with me?’ He risked a glance up from his lowered eyes.

‘As you may know, our weather god had… a bit of an accident.’

Plunk nodded, not looking up, as his hands worried and wrung his rain-soaked cap.

The Goddess reached out and lifted his chin. Her hand was soft, warm and dry. She looked into his eyes. ‘We have decided, the next weather god… it is going to be you.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Plunk said.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]

The Time of the Lesser Gods

Now as at all timesI can see in the minds eye, in their stiff, painted clothes,the pale unsatisfied onesoutside the fish and chip shop. But those days are over now and those in need of the holy benediction of hot chips go elsewhere and follow other – lesser - gods.

There was a time, when this was fish and chip shops as far as the eye could see. Well, as far as the eye could see at closing time when we fell out of the pub. But for some reason, back then there was something in the atmosphere – possibly some kind of industrial pollution – which affected the sight after only a few hours in the pub. Making even the avoidance of a collision with a street light sometimes very problematical indeed.

Of course, some blamed the beer, but that was mere foolishness. Except, possibly, in the case of the Bull's Head. A pub where there was a strong suspicion the landlord served industrial effluent instead of beer. But, usually by the time we got to the Bull's Head such acts of connoisseurship were often – at best – mere philosophical speculation.

Still, the day came when the first kebabappeared upon the face of the land. Of course, there were some who regarded it with suspicion, with Sceptical Stan wanting to kill it with a stick. But for others of a more questioning nature it was the kind of challenge they liked to rise to – or at least stumble towards – once the pubs were closed.

Soon the kebab shops were everywhere. They became just as much of a tradition as the tradition they replaced. Then those wise – or brave - enough to pontificate to the general bewilderment of those alongside them in the queue about such things are told, in the wise words of the prophet Nhigelto 'shut the fuck up'.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

Medieval TV Schedules

Of course, back in the early medieval period there were far fewer TV programmes available, and only a couple of channels. Most of those programmes involved, in one way or another, either ploughing or the plague. Albeit with an occasional foray into travelogues for those thinking of joining their feudal lord's soldiers in an invasion of the continent and/or Wales and Scotland.

The long running TV soap opera Piers Ploughman of course had a massive (for the time) audience. Three times a week mediaeval peasants tuned in to see whether or not Piers managed to plough a furrow. All without falling foul of his manorial lord's foul moods. Or his wife's unreasonable demands for more children to help her get the harvest in. Or the local priest thinking up more ways to accuse Piers of committing some sin or another. Often, Piers endured endless trouble from his mother-in-law's disastrous attempts at witchcraft. Often resulting in that episode ending with a cliff-hanger. This usually saw Piers transformed into a frog by his mother-in-law.

Of course, the nightly news programmes on medieval TV mainly concerned themselves with the doings of kings and who they were doing it to. Foreign news mainly - as we have already seen above – concerned who was invading who, and which noble families were vying for which crown. This latter interest in the doings of the various noble houses brought about an early forerunner of the Football Pools. The peasants would tune in every Saturday, around tea time, to see which noble houses had fought each other for which crown and which one had won. A draw was worth three points and 21 points was enough for one lucky peasant to win the star prize of a goat. Thus making the lucky winner equivalent to a millionaire at today's prices.

Of course, all this changed in the late medieval period with the invention of the video game and the runaway success of the game Grand Pilgrimage 5. A game where the player had to get his group of pilgrims to Canterbury, despite all the odds against it.

From then on, TV in history tended towards a slow decline until the invention of the Reality TV genre in the Victorian period with Celebrity Ripper in Fog.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

The Untidy Universe

There is nothing. Everything is emptiness and hollowness.

But then that does save the bother of having to find somewhere to put it all. There should be at least some cupboard space, but there never is.

‘There is,’ as Wittgenstein said about this great philosophical conundrum, ‘never enough space on top of the wardrobe. For that which we cannot find space for, we must learn to live without.’

It is a problem overcome by nature in its constantly expanding universe. Obviously, some cosmic force had tried to stuff all of space and time into a universal cupboard, only to find it suddenly bursting back out again in what we now call the Big Bang.

Despite the complete lack of evidence for one, perhaps there was some sort of god after all. Perhaps a god whose wife suggested that he might tidy up the form and void a bit and put some of that matter away he’d left about all over her nice clean eternity.

So, like any normal bloke he just rammed it all in the universal cupboard and went off to watch the football on the telly, then jut as he’d settled down with a beer, the big bang burst out and there he was with a universe all over his wife’s nice clean floor.

No wonder he buggered off pretty sharpish as soon as the universe came into being and hasn’t been seen since.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

The End of Days

Unbuttoned Sex Cardigan askew, the High Priestess of the Quite Rude strode into the Fornicatrium with her handmaidens rushing to keep up with her.

The floor of the Fornicatrium was awash with lime juice, discarded orange peel stuck to the soles of their feet as the High Priestess led the way through to the High Altar. She stood for a moment in front of the altar, making the signs of obsequience. Then to the gasps of her handmaidens, she turned off the most holy TV set.

‘Don’t look so shocked,’ the High Priestess said. ‘It was only the local news.’

‘But the holy TV is never turned off….’ The Handmaiden’s Union Rep said. ‘Unless…. Unless it is the End of Days™!’ The handmaidens turned to one another, clutching their sex cardigans tight around themselves, their faces in shock.

The High Priestess shook her head, making calming gestures. ‘No, it is not the End of Days™… as you know none of the twelve true religions could get planning permission for any form of Armageddon.’ She looked away for a moment. ‘Could you imagine the parking problems alone?’ She shuddered, fastening a few of the lower buttons of her sex cardigan. ‘No, my holy sisters, the news is worse than that….’

‘Worse than Armageddon! Worse than the End of Days™, worse than the total destruction of the universe?’ The Union Rep glanced at her sisters. ‘Tell us.’

‘Tell us…. Tell us.’ The Handmaidens cried towards the High Priestess.

One handmaiden near the rear of the group tentatively raised her hand. ‘The national team hasn’t been knocked out of the World Cup again has it?’ She looked at her terrified sisters. ‘You remember what happened last time that happened, none of the men could perform the Holy Act of Fornication for several weeks afterwards. Remember…? We had to even put aside out knitting for a while to get them back to normal.’

The rest of the Handmaidens nodded, each remembering how many episodes of the holy soap operas they’d each missed as they tried to return the nation’s manhood to their former glory… well, state of almost adequacy.

‘No, it is far worse than that.’ The High Priestess wrapped her ceremonial cardigan around herself, wishing she could hold her knitting needles of office for comfort. ‘We… we have run out of chocolate.’

The screams of the handmaidens could be heard for miles around the temple and the people of that nation knew that their world would never be the same again.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]

A Time Long Before Now

It was a time long before now. It was a time long before I brought this world into being. Back then, I was no god. I am not much of one now, but now I have this universe I created and this world. It has these creatures who look to the skies for someone to thank and blame for their lives and the awareness of themselves they have.

They blame me for all that is wrong with their world and their short, hard lives and they praise me for creating them and the world they live in. I did not ask them to worship me and I don't particularly like it, or the way they keep talking to me in their prayers and at their times of sacrifice, begging me to intercede on their behalf.

Although, why they think I will do anything for them, or to them, I do not know. I just made the world and they came into being on it. I did not want followers, worshippers.

They fight amongst themselves all the time too, each side claiming they are the ones that know me best and know what I want of the world and the people on it. I don't even know that myself, and they certainly don't. Anyway, they just like to fight one another and I'm one of the best excuses they've found.

Not that it matters much to me, like I said I never wanted to them to worship me. All I wanted to do was make something and see what happened. Sometimes, now I wish I hadn't bothered.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]

The World from the Tower

I no longer know, not any more. There was a time when I could look down on this world from this tower and see it all spread out before me. Back then I thought I knew what it would be like to be one of the gods, looking down on this world, on the people going about their lives. Not once, back then, did I ever wonder why the gods would have made us and set us down upon this world to go about our business.

Back down on the ground, as I went about my day in the temple below the tower, I would look up at the sky so far beyond the tower and wonder what the gods were doing. I knew, or at least, I thought I knew, that what I was doing would please them. After all, I am the High Priest and it is me they speak through to the people… or at least, they used to.

I don’t know what has changed. I am not sure if the gods are still there, and that they no longer speak to me. Or whether I imagined everything and there are no gods and they never spoke to me.

I can remember that first day so well. I remember the monk in the school falling to his knees in front of me as the voice came from somewhere both inside me and outside me at the same time, speaking the words of the gods.

Back then, as the monk himself swore, I did not know a single word of the High Language. I knew nothing of the language of the gods. Yet there I was, speaking the words of the books as though I’d been born speaking the language of the gods.

From that day on, for the rest of my life right up until a year ago today, the gods spoke to me, and through, me. But since that day, last year, they have been silent.

Still I do not know if it is me or them that are to blame.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]

No Paradise

The stories we told were all the old stories that spoke of the world before this one. The stories of the paradise we'd lost. The Story Priests tell us tales of that old life we died and left behind, that place of paradise where life was long, easy and free. Stories of a time long before this one.

The Story Priests say that we are born into this life when we die in that paradise. Some ask: why – if it is a paradise – then why do we die? The priests respond that we must have done something wrong there, and so we are reborn here in this dark, grey, land as a punishment for all we did wrong in that old life.

The Story Priests then point to the ruins, now almost lost under the growing grass and heaping earth that almost buries them. They tell us the story of the Great Devil that arose in the Distant East. How it sundered this land from the paradise we once lived in and that now all those of us who failed in that paradise are reborn here.

Some, if not most of us, do not believe these stories, even though we learn of them from when we are young enough to listen. I look around the fires at night-time, watching the faces of the people as the Story Priests go through the rituals of the Telling. Each time I see eyes that do not believe, eyes that see this world and those ruins and wonder what kind of paradise this used to be. We sit, shivering in the rain and the cold, hoping the fire will last the night. We know – deep down – this, or any life before this, was never any paradise.

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

Only for Myself

As the evenings grew dark and the cool of the night brought her close to me. I would sit there with my arms wrapped around her and tell her all the stories I knew.

I told her of how I'd made this world just for her. I told her of all the plants, animals, mountains and rivers I had spread across it for her to name.

I told her how I'd created a sun to shine on her and rains to wash away the dust of the day. I told her of the moon and stars up in the blackness of the night for her to wish upon and wonder.

I told her of all the birds I'd made to sing to her of the morning. The sweet fruits I'd grown for her long slow afternoons.

Then she'd turn to me and ask why she was the only one. I would look at her and smile, saying that every world needs a goddess. She would be that one, the one to make this whole world turn. I told her that soon she would have worshippers and priests, priestesses and followers all begging her to intercede and save their souls and lives.

But, until then I wanted her only for myself.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US).]

Sundays

Sundays

Sundays everywhere were shut.
Closed up tight as a pious pew.
The stone smugness of the churches
with captured, captivated, congregations.

Sunday was a prison, confining,
conforming and confirming
through the conservation
of ritual and ritualistic thought,
constrained by tradition
and the weight of authority.

Sunday was a corpse, as dead
as the surrounding graveyard,
high on the hill above the village,
where the graves stood their ground,
sentries against the possibility of dissent.

Simplicities and Illusion

There was a time, or so we would like to think, when things were not so complicated. Eventually, we realise the simplicities of a more straightforward past are mostly illusions caused by the mind filtering out the awkward times that don't fit our golden memories. However, there is still this feeling there must have been a time better than this.

Of course, religions have taken such myths and – as usual – used them for their own ends, to speak of times before it was all ruined, of a Golden Age, of a time without sin and all such nonsenses. We would still like to believe in, even though we know such belief is only for those who look without seeing.

Marie knew too, that our own Golden Age was a creation of us looking back on certain selected instances. She still liked to think there had been a time when we were happier, even though happiness is such a nebulous concept, something that disappears like a magician's trick whenever you try to take hold of it. Nevertheless, she was still sure we were happy once.

Me? I don't know. I've never been that sure about happiness, what it is... or even if it is that desirable. Not that I prefer being unhappy, of course. Although, I suspect the puritan inside us all gets some sort of perverse pleasure from the denial of happiness, especially to those whom we believe have been dealt a better hand than us in this game of life.

Where I did agree with Marie was that you find happiness only when you do not realise it, discovered in retrospect when you look back. Trying to be happy in the future – to me, anyway – always seemed doomed to failure, as the future is something that lies always just beyond the grasp, something to reach for but never obtain. To me, happiness is in the places where you do not expect to find it, like a kiss in the middle of a rainstorm, or sunlight breaking free of a dull cloudy day. Moments, in other words, when the ordinary became – if only for an instant – extraordinary, like that smile Marie gave me after we kissed in the rain.

Cathedral

Cathedral

And there, so deep inside the darkest woods;
a sudden clearing, bright in sunlight waits,
long after all the head-high bracken fades,
long after the entangled brambles unwind.
It is a refuge, silent hidden, a place
of sanctuary, safe for us to stay.

The sunlight streaming in, up where the trees
each open their green, reaching fingers out
into a canopy over our heads
beneath this bright forgiving sky above
makes it a sacred place for our devotions.

This soft green grass for us to lie and offer
our nakedness in, as the sun heals us.
This place is special and deserves our praise,
we're going to remember how we ought
to live in glory, love and time together.
This place will save us, make us whole again.

Things Going On

At the time, well, none of us really knew what was going on. This, after all is not all that unusual. We usually find that if someone does claim to know what is actually going on, their claim – eventually – all revolves around either government and big business conspiracies, or giant invisible space lizards, and sometimes both.

The fact is that no-one knows what is going on, especially politicians. After all, politicians are a breed of people who can’t get a proper job and would have trouble finding their own arseholes with both hands, a map… and a sat-nav. So, to expect them to have any idea what is going on is a touch optimistic, to say the least. Obviously, the giant invisible space lizards would realise this as soon as they made contact.

Then there are all the nutters – religious and otherwise – who claim to have a direct line to god, the gods and/or the giant invisible space lizards. The conclusion to which is if the gods have chosen these people to represent them, then their claims to omnipotence are dodgy at best and for being all-wise and all-knowing… well. As for the giant space lizards, if they have really crossed light years, space and galaxies, then surely they should have more sense than to latch onto the first certifiable idiot they come across as spokesbeing for their case.

Consequently, the only philosophically sound response to any inquiry into what is actually going on is, and can only ever be: ‘Fuck knows.’

How to Shape the Sky and Curve the Land

It was out at the edges of this world. I was out there, creating some new land, some new world. I was alone, as I always am, out there. Not many people know about the edges of this world. They think it is seamless and complete, that it is -somehow - defined and enclosed by the physical, what we like to call reality.

I do not, of course, speak of heavens or hells, or any such mythological places. We know there are no heavens and there are no hells, except – of course – for those we make for one another, here in this ordinary reality. Those that once created the heavens and hells, of course, they may have glimpsed some idea of what I am referring to. They may once have touched the outer limits of the possible and learnt that it can be shaped. But they had more interest in inventing religions and for the same purposes some have always created religions, so they can to take some control over the lives and thoughts of others.

No, I was out here, learning how to shape the sky and curve the land to meet each other in some new world I wanted for myself. I, by then, had had enough of this world. Enough of this narrow cold world where we bump into one another and against one another all the time, always stunting and closing off the possibilities that even we mere humans can create with just one expansive gesture.

Yes, I was out there alone just creating my own small world and then she came along and changed everything.

The Winter After the Gods

This was such a cold place for so long. The winds blew us around, turning every corner into an ordeal of gritted teeth in the face of the howling storms. The snows and the cold rains reshaped the landscape around us; the fogs and mists came down and stole our world away. Making this land we thought we knew into some strange foreign landscape where nothing was the same or familiar.

We huddled together, hiding under furs and as close to the stuttering fires as we could manage, eking out a living from the frozen ground and the few animals that – like us – managed to survive.

We thought it could not get worse. We knew either we had abandoned the gods, or they had abandoned us. Of course, in places like this, far from the centre of the Empire, the gods do not have a hold on the people they have where the priests can enforce compliance. Our last priest died a long time ago, even before the coldest of this long winter began. Some laughed and said the gods took him before the worst of it. The rest of us laughed because we saw it proved there are no gods and there never were. Those that doubted were soon persuaded as the winter tore everything from their frozen hands: everything they cared about and all they held dear, taken by the cold and the dark.

But now… now the spring returns, slowly and tentatively. Even the snow no longer falls as the days grow longer and we wonder if the gods will return. Now the roads are passable once more, we wonder if the capital will dare send us another priest to make us recant the error of our heathen ways.

The Morning After

So this was the morning after. Elsewhere it would have been just one more ordinary spring morning. There had been some rain overnight, so the ground was still damp. Here and there a few of the bare trees were showing signs of budding and there were still a few snowdrops around and some daffodils were in bloom, bright yellow on the slopes of the undulating ground. Lower down, amongst the bodies, the ground torn up by the feet of the fighters and their horse’s hooves. There were a few early birds, crows strutting amongst the bodies, loose clothing fluttering in the wind and the flights of arrows trembling as the breeze passed through them.

Stunned, those of us still alive staggered around checking the fate of those we had laughed and spoken with only a day before. We took what we could take from the bodies and muttered a few farewells to those who would not hear.

We left the bodies of the soldiers, once we had stripped them of what was useful, but our own we piled up and burnt in the usual way of such things. Back before the gods had gone, a priest would have spoken as the flames took the bodies. But now there were no priests left, at least no-one who would admit to being one... not now.

So we stood watching the flames in silence, a few people muttering under their breath, but whether those mutterings were goodbyes, or half-remembered prayers, no-one else wanted to know. We left one another alone with whatever thoughts they had, then we turned back to the road and wearily moved on.

Wait and See

It was not, although we felt it. It had shape, form. Or rather there was an absence – sensed in the air – where it would be if it was here. Many thought it was some presence from some other world. The more mystical thought it was from some world to come that had slipped through the barrier between those separate worlds; some devil or demon from the nether regions making itself manifest. Those that longed for the end of the world to bring some terminal certainty to their uncertain lives saw it as presaging the end of days. Even though it was not the benevolent creator god they’d longed and hoped for, they still welcomed it and hoped the promise of it smiting the ungodly, who sneered and laughed at them, would be kept.

Others, more rational, thought it could be some seepage from a parallel universe. Maybe one with malevolent intent to be sure, but perhaps something that lived in a universe unlike our own where our concepts of right and wrong, light and dark did not hold sway.

More thought it was some mass delusion, some spiritual yearning for something beyond the wonders of this universe they found too hard to understand, a yearning for the simplicities of good and evil right and wrong, goodies and baddies.

Many more, though, thought it was best just to wait and see what happened next.

There Are No Gods

It was a long, slow winter. A time when it seemed the snow would stay forever. Some died, of course, the very old and the very young. Heads already bowed against the cold and the biting wind bowed lower in grief and forlorn hopelessness.

The midwinter festival was not the usual raucous revelry where people call on the drunken gods to wake from their long hangovers and bring about the spring. This time there was talk of the gods abandoning us, even talk that there was no such thing as gods. Talk the direst threats and tortures of the priests could not silence.

Soon, as the snows continued, the priests themselves ran for cover as the crowds in the increasingly bare market places turned on them. As I overheard one of my guards say to a serving wench, 'It is not often you see a thin priest.'

I – of course – have never had much time for gods and priests. I am more of a god than most of those the priests light the candles for and make sacrifices to. I have the power of life or death over some, but my Lord has that power over me. So perhaps it is easy to see that – to some minds – there should be someone, or something, that has the power of life and death over lords and kings and even over this world we walk through.

Myself, though, I have seen too much to believe in gods, both the worst and best that this world can do to people and the worst and best that people can do to one another.

No, there are no gods and no-one to blame for this winter that looks as though it will never end. We have only ourselves, one another, and this world and what we make of it.